Moniker down after Godaddy blackout and New ICANN CEO
Domain Name Journal reported the weekly domain sales list for last week and it has some interesting statistics. First, we’ll reprint the list of the top 20 sales and after that, we’ll cover the statistics that should interest domain investors the most.
1.Tracy.com $90,000
2.Cruises.co $82,500
3.VisaBulletin.com $50,000
4.Behaviour.com $30,000
5.ChinaFair.com $30,000
6.eCapital.com $30,000
7.GetFieldTrip.com $25,542
8.DryEraseBoards.com $25,000
9.Haustechnik.com $23,452
10.ChinaLegal.com $22,000
11.SafetyGloves.com $22,000
12.GarageDoorRepairs.com $21,250
13.Listar.com $19,000
14.EZT.com $17,500
15.4Gee.com $15,000
16.Adah.com $15,000
17.Heab.com $15,000
18.Wanderful.com $14,500
19.ChinaTime.com $14,000
20.MobileFutures.com $13,500
Do you notice anything when you scan the list? We noted several things. For one thing, 19 out of the top 20 sales were for .com domains. 3 out of the 20 were three word exact match keyword phrases. Another 3 out of 20 all had China in the domain name. Should these statistics affect your domain investing strategies? You be the judge.
And if you’re looking for some domain names that look ripe for increasing in value, don’t forget the Afternic Fall auction which ends at 3:15 PM Eastern time on September 20. As of close of business today, only 4 names had bids: AcneHelp.com, LocalPubs.com, Outreef.com, and SummerFestivals.com.
There are many other names in the auction that should be very good and we would have expected more action by now. Names like MartialArts.com, SummerResorts.com, WinterResorts.com, EmploymentFinders.com, and GreatSavings.com all have huge potential for lucrative websites.
For investors who don’t mind a little risk with their domains, eBay has loads of iPhone related domains up for sale. With Apple’s penchant for suing, and winning, many trademark infringement cases, buyers of these domains may not be able to keep them very long.
Another Registrar Under Fire for Downtime
Just a few days after GoDaddy’s 7 hour outage, another registrar went down. Earlier today, Moniker was down for 3 hours, not as long as GoDaddy but still long enough to cause a customer backlash across the social media sites. While speculation at first ran wild and rumor had it that another hacker had caused the problem, no one really knows for sure as Moniker has not given any explanation.
The other half of the company, SnapNames, has already been drawing fire due to another error with a domain auction less than two weeks ago. The domain ‘iq.net’ was accidentally re-listed after having been sold. Fortunately, the site did manage to catch the error and pull the second auction before anyone thought they had won the domain.
Only the month before, SnapNames was embroiled in a fiasco when an account manager moved and then sold the wrong domain. He was supposed to sell a .net domain and instead sold the .com version which belonged to someone else.
Sedo Confusion
US customers were confused if they tried to call Sedo support today. Instead of getting help, they were treated to a recording that wished they would “have a safe holiday”. As there is no national American holiday, Sedo was the butt of a variety of jokes online today. The only conceivable American holiday that could affect a company would be Constitution Day, which is observed on Monday, Sept. 17. Perhaps that is what Sedo is celebrating since they will also be closed on Monday.
New ICANN CEO Starts Early
Fadi Chehade started as CEO two weeks earlier than originally scheduled and immediately began to shake things up. He created two brand new positions and then hired two of his rivals from ICANN’s CEO search shortlist. Former public relations executive Sally Costerton was hired as the ‘chief stakeholder engagement officer’, while former Egyptian minister of communications Tarek Kamel is now ICANN’s ‘senior adviser for government affairs’.
Chehade also promoted several senior executives. Current senior vice-president of stakeholder relations Kurt Pritz is being promoted to chief of strategy. Pritz will be reporting directly to Chehade in his new position. Maguy Serad, senior director of contractual compliance, will move up to vice-president of contractual compliance, and he will also report to Chehade.
The interim CEO, Akram Atallah, will go back to his duties as chief operating officer. Chehade has expanded that Atallah’s position to also include the operation of the new gTLD program, registry services, and security.
Getting started with a bang is something Chehade has said will help to show his priorities, one of which he has stated will be to give more weight to compliance.
The only controversial choice thus far is putting Tarek Kamel as a senior adviser. Given the fact that he was in charge of IT during the Egyptian revolution, he is best known for being the man who turned off the Internet.